Who was the first to discover plankton?
Doubtless whales first discovered plankton, because it is the main food of some species of whales. Fish eat plankton too, of course, but whales, due to the incongruity of their huge size relative to the tiny size of their food, are often associated with plankton!As far as humans are concerned, Victor Hensen, a German zoologist, was the first to use the term 'plankton' to refer to the various plants, animals and micro-organisms that float about in the sea. The word plankton comes a from a Old Greek word meaning 'drifter or wanderer', but the ancient Greeks probably didn't use this word to describe such floating sea life. Or if they did, there is no record of it.Victor Hensen seems to be the first person to use the word 'plankton' in this way, in his famous scientific paper of 1887. But Hensen actually got the word 'plankton' from his friend Professor Foerster, who created this term for him. Formerly, such 'floating stuff' was simply called 'Autfrieb', which is German for... 'floating stuff'!However, Hensen could not have been the first person to discover plankton; he only named it! The first person to discover plankton must have been the very first human who waded into the sea and saw it floating around!